Winning in Sacramento

My diploma!

For the first time I have won something, if you don’t count games and stuff.

We was with The Channels in Sacramento for the journalism conference JACC. Just like when I was at JACC in Los Angeles and Fullerton there were speakers, workshops, activities, competitions and much, much more.

We left really early, 5 a.m. Thursday morning. Then seven hour bus ride. We slept a lot, and arrived pretty early. After that we were busy all weekend. All nights we have also been to the hot tub, and taught everyone to way “Fest i bubbelpoolen” (“party in the hot tub”)

Fest i bubbelpoolen!

My competition was on the Friday. As before they were all quiet about what it was about, and this time they were extremely secret. All we knew was that we were suppose to go on a bus and go somewhere. Also at the bus they were mysterious:

“We are going to… a place. We have talked to… the people there… that you are allowed to be there. Remember to only stay in areas where it’s legal for you to be, and where it’s safe”.

I mean, shit, what is this place, I thought. First I thought a military base, and then a prison. But it turned out we were going to Sacramento International Airport.

They had a press conference about their new Terminal B, which is almost completed, and is both within the budget and estimated time frame.

After the press conference we had 20 minutes to go around and talk to other people. I chose to go to the old Terminal B, that will be demolished, and talked to someone who worked at Starbucks there, and what she felt about the move and new terminal.

Alvaro from The Channels was also in the competition, and Julie and David was there to take photos. Meanwhile I texted a lot of friends and asked them to give me information about the airport, and I got back a lot of dates about opening, number of flights per day, and stuff like that, and it was very useful later.

Then we stressed to the bus, and they drove us to the hotel and we started typing the story immediately. Very stressful. But afterwards it felt good, and I thought I did a good job.

the bus we went in to the competition was a party bus that had a strip pole.

On Saturday we went on a field trip to downtown, and the capitol. It was cool. Then we went to the old town and bought a lot of candy, and wandered aroung the old buildings.

Me outside the The Capitol

Old town

In all the evenings we had dinner with the Channels delegation, and Saturday it was the banquette and award ceremony. When the news writing category came up I was really nervous, but when they suddenly called my name and that I got a honorable mention it was so amazing. It means I was either fourth or fifth among 70 competitors in that category and that is really good. A good evidence that I actually am a good writer.

At the bus ride home we watched a dvd box with the series Arrested Development.

Now awaits a calm week, and then on Saturday my parents will be here!